I didn't really spend any time at "friends" places til I was almost done with high school, and when I tell you it was straight up culture shock ... I just ... woo!
My family is multi-racial and massive. So imagine my shock walking into a house where people are just one color and there's only 3 of them and like ... that's it?
Three? Where is everyone else? My dad has nine siblings. Most of them have 5 and 6 kids and even more grandkids. Moms side of the family is just as big.
One Reddit user asked:
What's the weirdest thing you've seen happen at a friend's house that they thought was normal?
For me, the weirdest thing by far was just the total lack of people. Friend's houses felt like post-apocalyptic desolate wastelands for the first few visits until I started to understand that it was *ME* who was the one living in an unusual situation.
Let's see what these people discovered.
The Musty Smell
Funny Face Reaction GIF by TikTokGiphy"Was on a date with a guy who was cooking dinner for me and his dog took a giant horse pee in the living room. I jumped up, a bit panicked, trying to get the guy's attention to what just happened."
"The guy didn't even look up when he said 'Oh yeah, she does that sometimes' ... and that was it."
"I asked him if there was a towel and disinfectant I could use to help clean it up and the guy says 'I'll just throw some Febreeze on it after dinner.' "
"I suddenly realized the musty smell I noticed earlier wasn't from his cool and rustic cabin being under a canopy of trees, or that the floor in the same location that bowed when you stepped over it was because it was old."
"Ate dinner at a table that was couple feet away from the dog toilet. Left."
"Fcking gross." - Revolutionarysugar6
The Daycare Bartender
homer simpson daycare GIFGiphy"Here's an 'I was that family' story. My Godmother (who was practically an aunt) ran a fairly successful daycare out of her home in the 90s."
"She was a first generation immigrant to the US, whose parents came to the New England area from Ireland. My two younger brothers and I spent a lot of time at her home and I was generally the oldest child there."
"When I was about 8 years old, she started to have me make her her favorite drink. Gin and tonic. She drank these ALL DAY, while running her home daycare."
"At age 8 I knew...how to mix cocktails, that forks were better for stirring than spoons, and that large plastic bottles of gin were cheap and low quality."
"This went on for years, on pretty much a daily basis, until my family moved out west. My Godmother kept her daycare running until she died (I'm sure of health problems relating to alcohol.) "
"I was 15 when she passed and I'm in my 30's now. I honestly went most of my life thinking NOTHING of it until I became a father a couple of years ago. At which point I was like... 'How the f*ck did anyone let her have a daycare?' "
"Side note, I drink but would consider myself an average drinker, if not below average. With that being said, I could never stomach the thought of gin and didn't try gin until I was 30. "
"This was because I once licked my finger, early in my daycare bartending career, after a couple of drops of gin splashed on my hand as I was pouring. That plastic-half-gallon quality gin was the worst thing I'd ever had in my life and I had no idea how my Godmother liked it so much. Complete ruined my taste for gin...at 8." - academic_bar9792
The Hoarders
2 broke girls GIFGiphy"I had a friend in High School - we're still friends today actually - whose mom was a hoarder."
"There were little pathways throughout the house but it was filled, from floor to ceiling, with junk. In the hallway to the bedrooms, she had stacked every newspaper she ever got. They were tied up in bundles."
"When you walked in that hallway he would caution to not touch the papers because if a row fell, it would take a couple hours to dig yourself out." - ferrariguy1970
"Not really weird I guess, but first time in my husband's parent's house (just a friend at the time), I got to see what a hoarder house looked like."
"It wasn't even a well-known term/condition back then, so it just really shocked me seeing the giant mounds of stuff everywhere and having to navigate through it all. His room was clean, the rest of the house, not so much." - ArtsySAHM
Cool
This Is Cool GIF by MOODMANGiphy"I babysat for a family on occasion and the kids would always ask for a 'cool cup' and I had no clue what it was. They asked for them constantly but were too little to really describe them enough for me to understand."
"I mentioned it to the mom in passing one day and she started laughing hysterically. She then showed me the cool cups by cutting the tops off of some bell peppers, taking out the seeds, and then filling the peppers with tap water."
"The kids went nuts over them like there were treats. It was really weird to me that drinking water out of bell peppers was a thing to beg for on the regular." - Kikabennet
"One of my friends has a 3 year old that was wanting some sort of like yogurt drink or something. He'd already had one so answer was no."
"He asked a couple more times and so my bud asked him in an excited tone, 'Do you want a cool drink!?' "
"Of course kid got excited and said yes."
"My friend put ice and water in a blender and made a shredded ice drink. Kid drank 3 of them and was jazzed about it. Lol" - ConstipatedUnicorn
The Documentarian
Photo Pictures GIF by The GodfatherGiphy"Went to a sleepover at this girls house and her mom was obsessively taking pictures of us all night."
"At one point, we were watching a movie and my friend passed out and her mom , I sh*t you not, pulls out a huge newscast-type heavy duty camera and starts recording her daughter sleeping for a solid 5 minutes."
"I have trouble sleeping and so that night when us kids were in the bedroom to sleep, I was on the floor, just staring at the wall in the dark. I was facing away from the door, laying on my side."
"I hear the door creak...some footsteps and then the darkness of the room lit with a sudden flash."
"I got up just in time to see the door close. I know it was her mom taking pics of us. The weirdest part to me is that it was about 3am when that happened - meaning the girl's mom either had an alarm or just stayed up that late in wait..."
"It wasn't explained and the mother also took like 20 pics of us eating dinner and breakfast the next morning. Also, we were in high school."
"I found out later her mom is just like that. We had a school science fair and her mom came and was taking pictures of EVERYTHING, even the carpet." - TraditionalEye4686
"My grandmother lost her first child in a tragic accident. She was like this with my dad. Maybe she had something like that in her past." - robbysaur
The Best 'Actually, You're Speaking To The Boss' Experience | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
There are a few experiences as frustrating as dealing with an entitled customer. But there's absolutely nothing quite like dealing with someone who doesn't r...House Cows
cow GIFGiphy"Had a friend who's family lived on a huge property and kept cows for the property tax exemption. Not odd around the area."
"He told me to come by. When I got there he invited me in to meet his parents and I swear to God there was a full size cow chilling on one of their couches in the living room." - Veg305
"Growing up we had some goats and land but no cows."
"My brother decided to go to the livestock auction with one of his friends and saw a baby cow being sold for meat. I guess he just couldn't stand the thought of this poor little cow being sold to be eaten so he won the auction for it."
"He then walked it home somehow and didn't put it in the pasture, nor the backyard, but INSIDE THE HOUSE INSTEAD."
"My mom came home from work and was like 'excuse me everyone, why is there a cow in the hallway?'"
"Lmao he got in so much trouble. Loved that cow though, he thought he was a goat." - bunnykitten94
The Doctors House
Elizabeth Corday Doctor GIFGiphy"My house - but looking back it's unusual."
"My Dad was a doctor and it was not uncommon for him to take a patient's blood on the way home and store it in the fridge next to the orange juice overnight. Then take it to work the next morning."
"Can't do that these days of course but the 70s was pretty wild." - Ozdiva
"My grandparents were doctors and this is the least weird story in this thread for me. Living with a doctor is an educational adventure." - ChasingSplashes
"Almost same but my brother. He is a veterinarian but during his study, he'd bring all sorts of animal cadavers in the house. Lol" - Adonis_X
The Bears Couch
Giphy"One of the first times I met my husband's family, I was over at their house and husband gestured for me to sit down and be comfortable."
"Their house was really very cluttered. Not quite hoarder cluttered, but close. They had a couple of couches facing each other and then some other chairs."
"Not knowing the 'rules,' I sat on one of the couches, which had a lot of stuffed teddy bears on it. OMG, you would think I had sat down on live bears."
"There were probably 20-30 small - medium stuffed bears on this couch. Husband's mother and twin brother both visibly reacted as if I had damaged the bears. (Not antique bears either)."
"That was when I was told that the couch was for the bears, and only for the bears and that no one was allowed to sit on the bears' couch. Just the bears."
"The bears all had little beaded necklaces with their names on them to tell them apart because they were all the same brand and style." - floridianreader
The Dog's Room
bored german shepherd GIFGiphy"Friend of mine had a German Shepherd. I never once seen it outside, always in the house."
"I only ever went up the stairs once and there was a spare bedroom with just a carpet down and piles and piles of dog sh*t everywhere." - ProbationInTheMaking
Distinct Sound Of A Shot Gun
Shotgun GIF by memecandyGiphy"In high school a friend and I went to a later movie then planned to sleep over at her house. The movie got done around 10pm ish."
"The house was dark as her parents were early to bed."
"As we walked in her back door there was a distinct sound of a shot gun being racked and her father saying "who's there?" My friend just calmly says "oh its just us" and that was that."
"One and only time I've had a gun pulled on me." - dstone1985
The McChicken Stash
chicken GIFGiphy"Use to hang at my one bro's parents houses. He stayed in the basement, had a low paying job, whatever, he makes dough now."
"Anyway we would get cheap food from McDonald's usually. It was when the McChicken first came out and the dollar menu, around when subway came out with the 5 dollar footlong."
"But we use to drink beers and get hungry and subway was always closed by this time so one of us would run to McDonald's and get like 6 McChickens. Well he would always only eat 2 and put one in his sock drawer."
"Thought maybe he had an elf to feed when I left or something."
"Nope he was eating it later or the next day. He even would stash one under the seat in his car, when he drove to grab them. Long story short he got diverticulitis after doing this for years."
"Neither of us eat McDonald's anymore." - moonshotmercury
Keep it weird, my friends. Keep it reaaaaaal weird.
Just ... ya know ... not when company is over. Keep it weird on your own time. lol.